English Dub Review: Fairy Tail “Neo Eclipse”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Acnologia, the super-powerful dragon, is in hot pursuit of Captain Ichiya and his cargo of Erza and Wendy. Acnologia is fast, strong, and super self-confident, so it will take a miracle to overcome him. Luckily, a miracle is just what they might’ve found.

A mysterious woman named Anna introduces herself and tells them the story of how she came to this time period from the past in order to destroy Acnologia. Her plan is to trap Acnologia inside a rift in time forever – the very rift that may have been caused by her and the dragon slayers entrance into the world.

Our Take:

With an episode packed so full of major, timeline-shaking historical events, you might think that it would turn into a confusing time-traveling magical mess. But actually, Fairy Tail manages to pull off a pretty clean, slick outing this week, complete with some interesting plot developments. (But not really much else.)

The major turn of events is that Anna has entered the picture. The whole timeline is a bit ambiguous, but from what I could gather, Acnologia was such a big threat in her original world that she decided to journey into the future to defeat him? Or something like that? What is clear is that some of the dragons entered the bodies of dragon slayers, and she took Natsu and his friends with her. They were meant to enter the world together, but a freak mishap caused them to misfire, and they shot off as colorful shooting star-like projectiles in various different directions. Eventually, Anna tracked all of them down, but when she saw that they had begun new lives in their new home, she decided to let them be, and monitor them from afar. She’s also been monitoring for Acnologia, and thinks she has a way to defeat him. Apparently, a rift in time was created when she jumped forward to the year 777, and in this rift, nothing can exist. Hence, trapping Acnologia inside this rift will end all their problems. It’s a little bit of a sketchy idea, but it’s all they’ve got!

This sounds like a lot of expositionary info, and it is. But when it’s presented in a fairly clear, logical manner, it’s a lot easier to digest and isn’t too boring to watch. There are really only two storylines in Neo Eclipse, Anna’s appearance and Zeref’s ongoing fight with Natsu. That isn’t really doing anything fun this episode, but Lucy, Gray, and Happy get their weird little moment where they decide to crack open Natsu’s book, which might have disastrous consequences? Speaking of books, I really liked the little sequence where Anna explained how she opened a portal to travel through – by writing a book in the past, then waiting for her ancestors to pass it on through the generations until it arrived in 777 and she could meet it there. Easy peasy! One thing I did not care for was how boring this episode painted Acnologia as being. He’s supposed to be this gigantic, evil threat, and he can’t even catch this junky air barge? He doesn’t even breath fire at it? He’s just been trailing on their tail for hours without doing anything, and that seems very anticlimactic.

The dub this week was fine. Anna’s voice was about what I expected when I saw her design, no surprises there. She is a really cool character, though, especially when she delivers lines like: “We can trap Acnologia inside the nothingness… forever.” Zeref’s idea to restart the world is happy… but only depending on the context: “I can create the happiest ending imaginable!” But Natsu reminds him he’s being selfish: “Not for everybody! What about my friends?”

Neo Eclipse was a fine episode of Fairy Tail’s ninth season. It introduced a fascinating new character and backstory without being too confounding. There wasn’t much going on apart from this storyline, no real jokes or anything, but hey, sometimes you just need a serious episode to get where the show wants to go.